Great Bear Rainforest
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EDUCATOR’SEDUCATOR GUIDE TO GUIDETHE FILM CREATED FOR IMAX AND GIANT-SCREEN THEATERS A Film for IMAX® and Giant Screen Theatres CONTENTS INTRODUCTION TO THE EDUCATOR’S GUIDE Introduction to the Educator’s Guide .....................................................1 “I get a lot of fulfillment just being here, in this world of diminishing Background on the Great Bear Rainforest ........................................4 ecological returns. It is hard to describe how special this place is. Map of the Great Bear Rainforest ...........................................................38 I think we are just so fortunate to have a place that still has the Summary of Learning Plans .........................................................................8 working parts—the full suite of flora and fauna—and we’re not Learning Plan 1: When Herring Bring the New Year ...........11 talking about How are we going to bring these animals back? and How are we going to restore this system that’s been destroyed? Learning Plan 2: A Close Examination of Habitat .................17 which is really the ecological conversation for most other places. Learning Plan 3: Rainforest Communities ..................................25 Here, we just have to protect what we have. If we just leave it alone Learning Plan 4: Mapping the Great Bear Rainforest ........33 and stop treating it like an inexhaustible resource it would have a Learning Plan 5: When Things Don’t Go as Planned ...........41 fighting chance. I love it up here. I’ve raised my kids up here. Learning Plan 6: When You Change an Ecosystem ............53 There’s still so many things left to do and places to explore.” —Ian McAllister, director of Great Bear Rainforest Learning Plan 7: Connecting with Climate Change .............67 Learning Plan 8: Systems in Harmony ...........................................75 This eductor’s guide, created for MacGillivray Freeman Films by Orca Beyond the Scenes: Exploring the Ocean of the Great Book Publishers with contributions from Ocean Networks Canada, is Bear—A special section with Ocean Networks Canada ..84 a companion resource to the giant-screen filmGreat Bear Rainforest. The guide provides a variety of multidisciplinary activities rich in Additional Resources ..........................................................................................89 language, science, ecology, social sciences and character education, each of which ties directly to the film. Lessons are grouped into learning plans and are organized according to age (e.g. kindergarten and primary; upper elementary; middle school; high school). Where relevant, we have connected the content of the learning plans to the Next Generation Science Standards (ngss). Every learning plan and lesson connects with common English Language Arts standards, and many address Social Studies standards as well. We’ve also given you a bulleted list of character education/emotional intelligence competencies when those skills are developed. A list of resources at the end of the guide provides additional connections for educators and learners to extend their inquiries. THE INQUIRY APPROACH TO LEARNING One thing you will notice in this eductor’s guide is that we’ve set many of the learning experiences up for an inquiry approach, where your students can take charge of their explorations—and take their Great Bear Rainforest — Educator’s Guide • ii 1 • Great Bear Rainforest — Educator’s Guide can navigate challenges with purpose and resilience. We can’t teach the same thing to every student and think they’ll be prepared for real life anymore—not when 75 percent of their jobs haven’t even been invented yet. They’ll be far better equipped to learn if we teach them how to learn. Inquiry has been shown to: • deepen engagement; • foster curiosity and a desire to learn; • inculcate self-regulation and a growth mindset; • sharpen research skills; • enhance learners’ ability to ask good questions; • expand critical thinking and interdisciplinary thinking, as inquiry takes students’ learning on a much deeper dive than you usually see in learning deeper. This shows up especially in activities where students traditional schooling; and decide for themselves what to research and focus on, based on their own • show students how much power and enjoyment they have when they interests. While many of the guide’s activities are designed for a traditional take ownership of their learning. classroom setup, we acknowledge and support the global shift toward inquiry. True inquiry—where educators walk beside learners as mentors Inquiry as an approach to educating children is transforming schools while the students progress on their journey of discovery—shows kids across the world. In its essence, inquiry means creating space for students that their interests matter. In so doing, it puts them in the driver’s seat to pursue the things that interest them the most on an individual level. Not of their learning, which in turn fosters self-discipline, faith in one’s own learning the same thing that the kid in the desk next to you is learning just capabilities and a better understanding of oneself. While this guide is not because it’s 1:30 on a Wednesday afternoon and the schedule says MATH. set up for full inquiry (as we don’t know each child’s deepest personal Inquiry is a very natural way of learning—in fact, it’s inborn to all of us. interests), the activities here give your students flexibility and autonomy A baby learns to walk because it is motivated to learn a better way to get in their choices in learning about the Great Bear Rainforest. around, and it is curious enough to try (and fail) until it reaches mastery. Character education and emotional intelligence are also key A young child learns everything they can about dinosaurs, watching competencies for young people heading into the career sector in the shows and reading books and playing with figurines and excavating bones twenty-first century. Inquiry learning is well suited to support emotional from blocks of dry sand, then painstakingly reconstructing them. As intelligence, as learners check in with themselves constantly about their young children, we naturally follow our interests and motivations, asking direction and focus. As they develop more sophistication, they learn to ask questions and seeking to understand. better questions, and they reach out to members of the community to help Inquiry in the classroom works much the same way. Acting as guides, them in their inquiries. This in turn helps them develop agency, building educators walk beside learners as they explore and investigate the things strong networks of mentors around them—a key piece in wellness and that matter to them. It’s a radical transformation to a system that has mental health. historically dispensed identical packets of content to each student at We can see the importance of mentorship in inquiry learning in Great prescribed periods in their development—teaching them what to learn. Bear Rainforest as well: Nelson is learning from his father, Marven, about But after generations of this kind of approach, we’ve come to realize taking care of the spirit bears. Saul has learned how to fish and lead from that’s not the way humans learn best. The modern world is fast-changing his father and the line of ancestors before him. Mercedes is learning to and unpredictable, requiring people to know themselves well so they capture bear hair from rub trees in order to study their dna. Her mentor Great Bear Rainforest — Educator’s Guide • 2 3 • Great Bear Rainforest — Educator’s Guide is Douglas Neasloss, chief councillor for the Kitasoo/Xai’Xais Nation. is stunning—and all because this place remains relatively untouched by Douglas works with other young people as well to get them engaged and humans. It’s still natural, much the way it has been for millennia. interested in caring for the territory. “We have some of the highest amount This is the Great Bear Rainforest: misty, lush, wild, abundant. It rains of protected area in all of the coast,” Douglas says. “We have a very strong most of the time in this coastal paradise—an average of 6,650 millimeters young core of youth stepping up and getting ready to take some of these per year. Measuring 6.4 million hectares—about the size of Ireland or roles, whether it’s hereditary chief titles, whether it’s band council titles, Nova Scotia—the Great Bear Rainforest is one of the wildest places on or whether it’s leadership roles in the community.” It is mentorship that Earth. It supports the largest tract of intact temperate rainforest left on makes possible this transfer of knowledge and stewardship. the planet. Threats to this intact temperate rainforest include logging, The inquiry method of learning is modeled very strongly in Ian overfishing, hunting and climate change. McAllister, the director of Great Bear Rainforest. Ecological concerns About 18,000 people live in the Great Bear Rainforest today. But captured Ian’s heart as a teenager. By the time he was in university he knew because of its natural bounty and endless sources of food, it likely has it was where he wanted to focus his energies. He participated in blockades been much more densely populated throughout history, prior to colonial and protests, learned how to climb trees and camp out in their branches, contact. Indigenous peoples have called this coast home for well over started a nonprofit organization (Pacific Wild) and taught himself how to 10,000 years. Some twenty-six First Nations live in the Great Bear carry his message of conservation so that it would be heard by the people Rainforest. Their cultures and languages, while often distinct from each whose minds needed changing. By trying and failing—a hallmark of the other, all reflect the beauty, scale and generosity of this territory. inquiry process—Ian figured out how to photograph and film the rainforest Residents of the Great Bear Rainforest live in small towns like Bella and its wildlife so he could spread awareness, developing his skills to a Bella, Kitamaat (Kitimat), Klemtu and Hartley Bay, as well as in more level where he is now an award-winning photographer and creator of a remote communities.